WEEK 7 - SHARING SLIDE PRESENTATIONS

I liked the information in Tara's SlideShare Class Project and thank her for sharing it since Overdrive is available to our students and patrons. I tried to access the audio portion which it indicated was available, but instead, got a message saying "Your SlideShare account not yet verified." I was a bit surprised since I set up the account yesterday. It gave me an instruction to resend my information saying the verification would be sent to my email, but so far, it has not appeared.

I tried to go into a cite called "Importance of generational awareness for libraries," and it took forever to load. Once the first slide appeared, my computer locked up with the hourglass working and working. Since I went completely out of the program and tried again with the same results, I'm assuming there is a glitch of some type! I'm going to wait until Monday to try again.

http://www.slideshare.net/pizidoro/beatiful-libraries-in-the-world I loved the pictures of how libraries used to be constructed with so much architectural beauty!

WEEK 6 - CHAT

OMG! IMHP ("in my humble opinion" for those like me who don't know the lingo) IM could be useful if as with LRC Live, there are specific times when you know those you want to "talk" with are online when you need them. I can see where it would be nice to have a chat room with other VCCS librarians whose duties correspond with mine so we could occasionally discuss how to handle new policies dealing with the specifics of our jobs. I do this with a counterpart at one of the community colleges, and it has been very helpful, but I use email and the telephone--the old fashioned way!!

Years ago when chat rooms were new, we put signs on our internet computers saying, "NO CHATTING" in order to keep them free for student research. A patron called me over to ask if it was okay for her to "talk quietly" to the person at the computer beside her. I can see why she was confused!

The "Web-Based Instant Messengers: A Mini-Guide" was really helpful in listing all the possible sites to use, and it's great that IMs now have cross-platform communication, but I will whine again that it is just soooo time consuming to have set myself up with still another social network.

WEEK 5: WIKIS

Friday, May 7, 2010

WEEK 5: WIKIS
Wikis bring a new dimension to information gathering and dissemination. The "Wikis in Plain English" video was really helpful in introducting the concept to me as I was not familiar with the term (except as in Wikipedia, of course). My first thought was that this is a great way to organize and communicate. My next feeling was that interesting though it may be to contribute to a wiki, is this just another website requiring time to monitor, and should each library/librarian/patron just decide on the best method to use and not go in too many directions. I was happy to see that some of the sites, while allowing lots of input, keep editing privleges to those responsible for the site.